Towering Above
by Jeune Chat
Summary: Ethan has a secret.  So does his girlfriend.  When you're both protecting the same thing, can it really be hidden?  EthanOC.  For Azul Tigress' Secrets challenge.


**Disclaimer:** I don't own Ethan or the Sky High universe, those belong to Disney. Chloe is mine though, as is everything else you don't recognize.

**Author's Note:** This is for Azul Tigress' "Secrets" challenge. Plotbunny inspired by Matchbox Dragon and my own little mind. This stands alone, but if you're reading War and Peace In Mind you could put this after chapter 38. Ethan and Chloe's relationship was sort of inspired by Zoe and Wash from _Firefly_ and Hermes and LaBarbara Conrad from _Futurama, _if you're interested. I don't own them either. Sigh.

* * *

Ethan had a secret. 

He was a superhero.

And his girlfriend had no idea.

When he had met Chloe Zell two years ago, Ethan was pretty sure he had fallen in love at first sight. Or, well, maybe not love, but somewhere in the Big Huge Crush territory. He rather liked tall girls; he considered himself something of a leg man. Not, of course, that he had ever voiced, written, or even thought about that very hard in the actual presence of any female. He may not have had a great deal of experience in romance, but he wasn't entirely stupid.

But Chloe had arrested him, visually and mentally, the first time they had met. He had been on a camping trip with the gang, and she had been hiking with her friends and her brother. They'd met more or less by accident, talked for a bit, and the two of them had gotten into a lively debate about superheroes. She was one of those citizens that knew at least as much or more about them as he did, and he had loved every minute of basically challenging each other back and forth to test their knowledge. The last time he had done that to a girl she had refused to talk to him again. Instead, Chloe asked for his phone number.

Ethan had spent the rest of that vacation in a fluffy daze of happiness.

Then he had gone home and had a long and somewhat awkward conversation with his parents about when or if he should tell her he was a superhero-in-training. Ethan's dad was a hero, but his mom was citizen, and he had never actually heard the whole story about how that had all come out.

"I didn't tell your mom about my day job until just after you were born," Austin Howard had explained to his son. "Though, now that I think back on it, that was kind of bad timing."

Trisha Howard gave her husband an exasperated but tolerant look.

"Tell her as soon as you're comfortable sweetheart. But the sooner the better."

Ethan had looked back and forth between the two, and quickly came to a conclusion he didn't dare voice.

_So _that's_ why I'm an only child._

Since then he had been bringing every lesson he had ever learned in Protecting Your Secret Identity class into play. It hadn't been hard to make the decision; if things ended up not working out, it would have been dangerous in the extreme if she knew about his powers. Magenta and Zack, Layla and Will had it so much easier… Relatively speaking. At least Chloe couldn't string him up with poison ivy or bite him in embarrassing places if they broke up. He felt a little cold, thinking about things so clinically about a girl that he really, really liked, but somehow he knew that if he explained this to Chloe sometime, she would completely understand.

It had been easy enough to keep Sky High a secret while Chloe and him were just phoning and e-mailing back and forth. But when they had started visiting each other, it had gotten harder. He didn't dare have her spend too much time with his friends, mostly because he was afraid Zack would start glowing, or Will would accidentally break something, or just someone else would inadvertently comment about Mad Science class or Save the Citizen in gym. With careful omission of a few choice facts and the simple fact that there _were_ citizens out there that knew so much about superheroes, he passed off most of his knowledge as book learning and not direct experience without ever telling a lie.

Then Chloe had shown up unannounced for a surprise visit two months before graduation.

Ethan had a rather peculiar power quirk. Unlike Warren, who might involuntarily power up when he was angry, or Zack, who might do it when he was excited, Ethan accidentally powered up if he was relaxed. That's what his power felt like to him, like he was relaxing every muscle in his body. As a consequence, he generally slept melted, and even studied melted.

His parents had met Chloe at the door, not said a peep to him, and then sent him up to his room to surprise him. To this day he wasn't sure if they had been purposefully trying to get him to tell her the truth or not. He had been on the far side of his room, lying melted on some books whilst he studied furiously for his finals in Superhero History and Advanced Mad Science. His door had creaked open, he had gotten a glimpse of Chloe's high-heeled boots, and only reflexes honed by four years of Coach Boomer's relentless instruction had seen him resolidified before she finished opening the door.

Surely she hadn't seen. She hadn't given him a single glance that said otherwise, hadn't made a single comment, not even given him any knowing quirked brows. Ethan breathed a sigh of relief; he would tell her, and he'd do it before too much longer, but he didn't want her to find out that way. It would have been too embarrassing for words, after all the careful plotting and artful lying he had done to keep her ignorant for the past two years, to be caught by a simple surprise visit!

There were tips and tricks to handling things like that after all. How many superheroes had had their secret identities uncovered because of a surprise? He had been careful, he had been quick. If she had said anything, he had a half-dozen plausible explanations ready. But she hadn't, and his secret was still safe.

It had shaken him a little though, and given him the final mental push. He liked her a lot, he knew she liked him, their families liked each other even. He had skated around this long enough, and it was definitely time to tell her about his powers. And soon.

And that was going to take as much courage as fighting any supervillain he could name.

* * *

Chloe knew a secret. 

Her boyfriend was a superhero.

And he had no idea she knew.

It wasn't easy to keep her knowledge from him, especially when he went to such lengths to hide it. She wanted to tell him, so he'd waste less time worrying, but that wouldn't have been fair to him. He'd certainly done a very good job of it, and though she had been a little uncertain up until now, tonight clinched it. She just had to let him know she was fine with it.

She knew the frequent fate of superhero spouses; how they were often captured by supervillains and used as leverage. If she wanted to stay with him, she knew she'd be subjected to danger, or at least the worry of knowing he'd be going out to risk his life nearly every day. Could she handle that? Would he try to push her away so she wouldn't be in the line of fire?

The very idea of having to give up Ethan made her blood boil, danger or no. He was one of the only men, aside from her twin brother, that wasn't intimidated by her intelligence, her height, or the fact that she was quite capable of defending herself. And it wasn't because he lacked self-confidence. He challenged her mind, he didn't back down from a fight, but he was respectful of her too. He wasn't self-conscious of the fact that she literally stood head-and-shoulders taller than him; she rather suspected he enjoyed it! It didn't matter to him that she could probably tie him into a knot if she wanted to. Probably because he could melt out of her grasp. Literally. And there were possibilities in that too… 

The fact that he knew so much about a lot of relatively obscure sidekicks with similar liquid transformation powers, comments he had made about shapeshifters in general, even their first meeting when he had pointed out some flaws in her argument about Tsunami, a water-shapechanger that was so relatively unfamous that most people didn't even know who he was, much less nitpick about him, had all given her the clues she needed. Ethan knew so much about superheroes because he _was_ one.

The fact that she had just seen him on her TV at the Superheroes' Ball erased all of her doubts. No amount of orange Spandex and no little domino mask could hide the fact that that was her Ethan standing out there in front of the spotlights. Slinging himself around the stage in his melted form made her smile; his comments on those particular superheroes made an extra amount of sense now. He had joked about some things running in his family, like bookishness, good memories, bad eyesight...

_Like superpowers, sweetheart?_

Chloe smiled broadly as she watched him wave and smile at the cameras. He'd be ready to tell her soon. And she'd definitely be ready to hear this secret.


End file.
